[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 81 (Wednesday, June 5, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5928-H5931]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REPUBLICANS VIEW ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Georgia
[Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 30 minutes as the designee of the
majority leader.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we wanted to talk tonight in response to
some of the things that have been going on in Washington. I have with
me the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] and the gentleman from
Arizona [Mr. Hayworth].
I think our first topic that we will go ahead and talk about is this
Wisconsin waiver, which basically is saying it gives the State of
Wisconsin the right to make their own laws on governing and reforming
welfare. President Clinton went out there 2 weeks ago and said, ``I
support the waiver for you, I like what you're doing, it's great,'' and
when the cameras were on, he was 100 percent for it. Then when the
cameras turned off, he backed off.
But the second thing that happened is the Republican Party said,
``Great, a bipartisan chance to work on welfare reform. We welcome
it.'' Here is a President who said he wanted to end welfare as we know
it, not extend welfare as he has been doing, so let us give him the
Wisconsin waiver.
It has been debated, as I understand it from the gentleman from
Wisconsin [Mr. Klug], 18 months in the Wisconsin Legislature. The
gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] was in the State legislature.
What is your comment on this?
Mr. GUTKNECHT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I was in a border
State in Minnesota. We have been debating welfare reform for a long
time. I think you have characterized it absolutely correctly, that this
bill that passed the Wisconsin Legislature, it is a giant step forward
in terms of encouraging more work and personal responsibility.
The President went to Wisconsin, said that he supported what was
happening in Wisconsin, would grant them the waiver, and then somewhere
between getting on the plane in Madison to fly back to Washington,
something happened and all of a sudden some of the bureaucrats here in
Washington apparently got to the President and said well, maybe we
cannot support all of those waivers, and all we are trying to do is
actually help the President to keep one more campaign promise. I am
really surprised at the characterization we heard here just a few
moments ago.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I would join my colleague from Minnesota, and I thank
my friend from Georgia for yielding. Yes, I would have to take issue
with the statements of our friend from Wisconsin, playing off some of
the philosophical biases of some of the self-appointed potentates and
pundits around the Beltway as if issues are there to be stolen or
plagiarized.
That is not the issue in this case. What is the issue is something
that is seemingly oft repeated in this dynmaic which exists between the
legislative branch of government and the executive branch, and that is,
unfortunately, and I say this not with any glee nor with venom or
vitriol, there simply is an inconsistency between the President's words
and the President's deeds.
And so again what we are doing in the new majority, with sincere
folks from the other side of the aisle, is to step beyond partisanship
and give the President the vote of confidence, I think we could almost
say, to move forward with the very waivers he so willingly embraced. My
friend from Georgia recalls that twice now we have passed welfare
reform, mindful of the President's words to end welfare as we know
it. We have done it twice and twice we have seen that legislation
vetoed.
Mr. KINGSTON. I want to make the point that the liberal media has
given President Clinton a free ride on just about any issue. What the
Congress is saying, ``We're giving you a chance, Mr. President, if
you're going to talk the talk, walk the walk.''
You mentioned that we have passed welfare twice and it has been
vetoed by this President twice. In fact, the last bill passed the U.S.
Senate by a vote of 87 to 12. That is a very strong bipartisan
statement, particularly from the Senate which is not exactly letting a
lot of legislation go.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. I would just add to that, the discussion we have had
today and we have heard tonight on special orders is really again sort
of back to this fundamental debate between those who believe that in
the final analysis Washington knows best and those of us who would like
to see, whether we are talking about Medicare reform or welfare reform,
to decentralize this thing and allow States and individuals to
[[Page H5929]]
make many of the choices themselves. It is really, and you hate to get
back to this debate about Boris Yeltsin and some of the comments the
gentleman made about the former Soviet Union, how we are encouraging
them to move to a more market oriented system.
Yet here in Washington it is easy to be in favor of welfare reform
and Medicare reform when you are out on a campaign swing, but somehow
when you get back to Washington, the influence of this city just says
no, we must keep the decisionmaking, we must keep the power here in
Washington.
Mr. HAYWORTH. And even despite the considerable influence and
pervasive atmosphere of this city, which seems to have a fundamental
disconnection with the rest of the country, there is another disturbing
development. Again our friend from Wisconsin who preceded us asked,
almost plaintively, ``Why can't Republicans and Democrats get along?''
I would contend that on many issues there are many folks on the
Democratic side who want to find solutions. What is troubling is that
there are many in this Chamber who, even in the act of despairing and
disparaging partisanship, turn right around and engage in the same type
of partisanship.
You mentioned earlier, and the example was especially unfortunate and
egregious, our good friend and colleague from Connecticut stood up
again, mischaracterizing and misquoting one of the prominent Members of
this institution with reference to Medicare, attributing a quote to
that individual, saying this individual said that Medicare would wither
on the vine. And indeed the record reflects that the speaker in
question was talking about the Health Care Financing Administration,
not the Medicare Program. I would simply repeat the quote:
You know, we tell Boris Yeltsin, get rid of centralized
command bureaucracies, go to the marketplace. What do you
think the Health Care Financing Administration is? It is a
centralized command bureaucracy. It is everything we are
telling Boris Yeltsin to get rid of.
No, we do not get rid of it in round one because we do not
think it is politically smart. We do not think that is the
right way to go through a transition. But we believe it--the
Health Care Financing Administration--let me add that
emphasis--we believe it is going to wither on the vine
because we think seniors are going to leave it, are going to
leave it voluntarily.
It is most disturbing. And as much as we want to move forward in a
bipartisan fashion, when there are those who repeatedly come to this
floor and either through misinformation or deliberate disinformation
choose to mischaracterize and unfairly characterize the facts in this
debate, then it is our duty to point out the inaccuracies of those
statements, not for playground taunts or to score debating points as if
this were some super sophisticated debating society, no, not at all.
Because we are cognizant of the fact that this is the Chamber in which
our constitutional Republic must talk out issues and must find
solutions.
Mr. KINGSTON. I am glad the gentleman mentioned that we do have a
very difficult time here approaching issues and the resolution of those
issues on a rational basis because of the rhetoric.
Here on this chart is a quote by the Democrat leader, Dick Gephardt.
This was on CNN September 30, 1995, last year. ``it is a big lie to say
that Medicare is in trouble.''
This is not an ordinary rank-and-file Democrat here speaking. Okay,
everybody may say something one time. But here again, ``Meet The
Press,'' July 30, questioned by a reporter.
``Isn't it true that we cannot allow Medicare to grow at 10 percent a
year?''
Congressman Gephardt says, ``Now the Republicans are saying because
the report says the fund will have insolvency problems in the year 2002
there's a great urgency. This is a hoax.''
This is the health care program that my mother is on, not just my
mother but all of her friends and my parents' friends who raised me and
helped me in my formative years. The Democrat leader says that it is
not going broke.
Here is the report which came out today. Last year this yellow line
says that Medicare would be going bankrupt in the year 2002. This was
the report of April 3, 1995. Well, that yellow line going bankrupt in
2002, that is what Congressman Gephardt was saying, ``That's a lie.''
Well, he turned out to be right. It was wrong. It actually is going
to go bankrupt, according to the new report, which just came out today,
about 2 years earlier than that, and there is a steady decline in
dollars already. Medicare is losing money. The very program that our
mother's health care depends on and you do not want to fact up to how
we are going to protect and preserve it? This is extremely important.
It is a high priority for me. It is beyond partisan politics. These are
the people who helped raise all of us. We owe them a debt. We have got
to crack down on the fraud and the abuse and the waste. We have got to
give them a choice of health care plans, a choice of physicians, the
same choices that you and I have when we go out into the health care
and insurance market. Let Mom and Dad have those choices.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. I just want to reiterate a couple of things that Mr.
Kingston has just said. First of all, seniors especially but indeed all
Americans have a right to the facts. Frankly I think that there have
been too many of these distortions and half-truths and mistruths and
outright lies. Frankly the quotes that you have used tonight from the
minority leader, I do not think they were taken out of context at all.
I think for a number of months I think it was a calculated position by
one side in this debate to basically say there is no problem and that
the Republicans have made this up and they are trying to cut Medicare
so that they can give this tax cut to the rich, which is bogus, anyway,
but the point is this is serious, it is real, and the program is going
bankrupt at an even faster rate than we were told last year.
But the other point that was made, and it needs to be restated, this
is not the time and this is not the issue for partisanship. This is an
issue that deserves real statesmanship. But the first thing we have to
do is face up to the facts. We have to get the facts. The American
people and seniors have a right to the facts.
The other point that Mr. Kingston made, and I think this is even more
important, I think we have got to address this, and I personally do not
address this as a Republican or even a Member of Congress. First of all
I address it as the son of two parents who are both on Medicare, who
both depend on the Medicare system, and hopefully will well into the
future for their health care.
A fellow came up to me at a meeting a couple of weeks ago and he said
something so beautifully and so simply. He said,
With the issue of Medicare and so many of the other issues
that you're debating out in Washington, it's not a debate
between the Republicans and the Democrats. In fact, it's not
so much a debate between the right and the left. It's a
debate between right and wrong.
It is wrong to conceal the facts from the senior citizens
when we know the facts. The fund is going bankrupt. Let me
just finally say that it is also wrong to tolerate a system
that is rife with abuse and waste and fraud. I do not care
which study you use. When I have my town meetings, I have had
people come up at my town meetings and talk about being
billed $321 for a toothbrush. I mean, there is so much waste,
fraud and abuse. The GAO, I think, said it was $23 billion.
Somebody else said it was $30 billion. We do not know what
the exact number is, but we know that the system we have
today, with the centralized control bureaucracy, is wrong.
Let me also say that the system we have, it is wrong for us to
tolerate a system that is so complicated that my parents, and indeed I
do not think most seniors can understand their bills. I mean, that is
just wrong. They ought to at least know what they are being billed for.
My father had surgery a few months ago and he got a stack of bills
this deep. I could not understand them. So I am sure he could not
understand them and I doubt if many people can understand them. We need
a simpler system that is built on market forces, that gives people real
choices and allows the market to help control those costs. Everybody
who has looked at this, every independent objective observer who
understands the health care delivery system says that our plan will
work and it will give people those choices.
Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to make a point about this fraud and abuse.
Right now Medicare does not pay people like your father with that stack
of bills, if he finds out that three or four of them are erroneous, he
does not get any kind of reward for that at all. In fact many
[[Page H5930]]
times when you say don't pay a bill to Medicare, you have to really be
proactive or they resist you.
But here is an example. This is a kind of a dressing, and I am not
sure, a salesperson gave this to me, and said that the cost, the actual
manufacturing cost, is like 9 cents and it sells under Medicare for
about $28.
{time} 2345
It is a total abuse of the system. And I just want to say that under
our reform plan, seniors who are getting billed for this kind of thing
right and left would have the opportunity to crack down on it. Let me
yield to the gentleman.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my colleague from Georgia. Even as we lament
the inaccuracies and what some, including those of us here on the floor
would believe are downright distortions coming from some folks who do
not appear really committed to finding a solution to this, in the
spirit of true bipartisanship, in the spirit of finding a constructive
path to solve this problem, let us state what has happened that has
been constructive.
First of all, the President today called on us to find a bipartisan
solution. I know we would say to the President, Mr. Speaker, we would
say welcome to this. Now let us own up to the problem and let us move
to solve it. Let us also note for the record that many Members of this
Chamber on both sides of the aisle lament the waste, fraud and abuse
the system has wrought. So we understand that fact.
Now again, not in the spirit of one-upmanship or political advantage
but in the spirit of truly trying to solve this problem and save this
program for our seniors, I believe we need to point out some honest
differences of opinion on this issue. No. 1, gone are the days and
indeed we see with the release of this trustees' report that the crisis
has grown more acute, that now we are looking at the fund going broke
in 5 years, but quite possible in 4.
Now again, our colleague from Connecticut stood in the Chamber and
said that the new majority was rejecting out of hand a commission.
Well, again, a closer check of history would indicate that that was
part and parcel of our solution program a year and a half ago. But
moreover, again those of us who are new to this town, I think, come in
perhaps without the experience of the so-called insiders but with clear
enough vision to understand that in Washingtonese, when you are dealing
with a program that is sensitive politically, one tactic that is quite
often used to pacify the citizenry until the next election is a blue
ribbon independent panel.
Mr. Speaker, again, I say this not in the spirit of criticism but in
the spirit of solving this problem. The problem is far too acute to
delay again or to put off or to somehow postpone until we get through
the next election. What we are talking about is health care for our
senior generations. My folks go on it next year. My 92-year-old
grandfather has prospered from his health care and is living an
outstanding life now, as indeed many senior citizens are.
The very thing we need to do is to move to save this program, and I
dare say at the end of another year and a half or another 2 years,
after we go through the pomp and circumstance of a commission, we will
be no closer to a solution when right now we have the blueprint which
exists to make the change. We passed it last year, last October, the
Medicare Preservation Act.
Now, again, Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I would
call on the President to join with us. The one thing we cannot afford
is any type of convenient Washington way out or gimmick that would
again seem to pacify or mollify seniors and try to take care of this
program. We do not need to play a shell game with $55 billion moving
from the Medicare trust fund to the general fund or vice versa or any
type of legislative sleight of hand to try and satisfy this problem.
We need to be up front. Many of us in this Chamber had the courage to
confront this a year and a half ago. We do not do that to ask for the
gold star of good partisanship. We simply recognized that fact and the
Medicare Preservation Act is a framework which offers choice, which
offers quite candidly what many seniors are comfortable with and that
is Medicare status quo which cleans up the waste, fraud, and abuse,
which introduces the concept of choice and which moreover actually adds
money to the beneficiaries every year, from $4,800 this year to well
over $7,000 a few short years from now, and actually increases at what
is basically twice the current inflation rate.
It is a prudent policy to follow to save this program. It is vital we
do so. So it is in that spirit of bipartisanship that we call on the
leadership of the minority side, that we call on the President of the
United States, that we call on the Members of the other body to move
forward to solve this problem. As today's report indicates, this is far
too important to put off because of political considerations.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield, I wanted with the few
minutes left to talk about another serious problem that we are facing
in America today, mostly with our young people, not completely, and I
am talking about drugs.
Now, I believe the two of you are familiar with the Clinton appointed
judge Harold Baer, the Federal judge. That case, as you know, involved
a woman who was in a high-crime area, pulled up to an area, I think at
4 in the morning. Four men stepped out of the shadows. She opened her
trunk. They put into the back of her car in the trunk two duffle bags.
The police moved in on this suspicious behavior. All five of them ran.
The police apprehended all of them and found out later that the duffle
bags were filled with cocaine, and this Clinton judge said that the
cocaine could not be used as evidence because to run from the police
was rational behavior in that neighborhood because the police were
known as oppressive. That is the kind of people that we are getting to
fight the war on crimes by the current administration.
Now, that is in the face of the fact that the average age for
marijuana usage in America right now is 13. Marijuana usage for 12- to
14-year-old kids is skyrocketing. This is a headline from the Charlotte
newspaper today as I was going through the airport: Teen girls use
drugs like boys. It talks about a new study showing that young American
women are closing the gender gap in drug use, and today's daughters are
15 times more likely than their baby boomer mothers to have begun
illegal drugs by the age of 15.
Now, can you imagine, we have got these kinds of things going on in
America today, and then we have judges like this appointed to the bench
to defend us and keep our streets safe?
Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield, I think the issue of
crime and drugs, it is interesting, it is not just the big cities
anymore. You can go out to the small towns. I remember the newspaper
editor in one of my small towns last year. You have to be from a small
town to relate to this. He said: You know, even here in Hayfield,
Minnesota people are starting to lock their doors.
I mean, this is a big issue. People no longer feel safe in small
towns. Rochester, Minnesota, which is a beautiful city and we are all
very proud of it, but even in Rochester we have had several murders
just in the last week and a half. So whether they are drug related,
some are, some are not, but the whole notion of appointing judges who
do not believe that people are responsible for their own behavior, that
is a very, very scary notion.
I think the American people are saying very loudly and very clearly
that we want a criminal justice system and we want judges appointed who
understand that people who would prey upon other people need to be held
accountable, and the innocent people need to be protected from those
who would prey upon them.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I think our colleague from Minnesota makes excellent
points, points worth echoing, because I can attest in the Sixth
District of Arizona, a district in square mileage which is a little
larger than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, with vast rural areas,
with not a great population density in those 46,000 square miles, we
are finding similar problems in the rural areas in the less densely
populated areas.
We are finding indeed, and it troubles me to even say it in this
fashion, but you know how many reputable businesses are built on
franchise. I dare say that gangs, part and parcel of our drug problem,
seem to be replicating or franchising far faster than any reputable
business organization. Now it is
[[Page H5931]]
coming into rural, sparsely populated Arizona.
We have many of the same problems and, indeed, both of my colleagues,
Mr. Speaker, have addressed this point. We have to ask this question as
well: One of the undergirding concepts of western law and, indeed,
whether it is British or American case law, is the notion of what is
reasonable.
That is, put in a particular situation, what would a reasonable
person do? As our colleague from Georgia points out, it is especially
troubling that a judge would move or would opine from the bench that
fleeing the police in a certain neighborhood should ever be considered
reasonable behavior.
{time} 2355
It is especially troubling, and indeed causes great concern, as we
look to our third branch of government in our separate but coequal
branches, as we try to address the problem of crime and the rise of
drug use among young people, we must move not for what is radical,
despite the playground taunts and the labels that we hear from so many
within here on the banks of the Potomac, but what is reasonable. That
must define what we do.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield, I think the irony of
this, and someone else pointed this out to me, that we currently have
some 20,000 or 30,000 troops patrolling the streets of Bosnia to make
the streets safe over there. But I daresay it is not safe to walk the
streets here in Washington, DC or in many of the cities in this
country.
Frankly, if we are willing to commit troops to make the streets safe
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we should be willing to do whatever it takes to
make the streets of the United States safe.
Mr. KINGSTON. That is one reason we passed the truth-in-sentencing
laws, as the gentleman knows, because as of a few years ago, the
average criminal was only serving 35 percent of his sentence. And we
are now saying if States want new Federal money to construct jails in
their State for violent criminals, then they have to serve their full
sentence, which makes the streets safe.
We are arresting people not for the 2d time or the 3d time, but for
the 9th, 10th and 11th time. It is not safe even if you are a police
officer.
We only have a few minutes so why do we not have some closing
comments. Mr. Hayworth.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my colleague from Georgia and I thank my
colleague from Minnesota for joining us this evening and, indeed, Mr.
Speaker, those across our great Nation who are looking in this evening.
We are confronted by profound problems. The test for us is not
posturing for an election in November but moving to solve these
problems. So once again, despite the challenges of some deliberate
disinformation, we call on our colleagues from the liberal persuasion
and the President of the United States at the other end of Pennsylvania
Avenue to join with us to save Medicare, to adequately address these
problems, to deal with the crime issue, to deal with genuine welfare
reform, and to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I would just
say that this debate tonight, this discussion tonight, has been
constructive, and it reinforces what I really believe, and that is the
fundamental debate that is going on here in this Congress and in this
country is really between those who believe in more Washington control
and more Washington responsibility. Whether we are talking about
welfare or crime, or whether we are talking about Medicare, I do not
care what it is, the issue is whether we will have more control and
more responsibility in Washington or are we going to reinforce more
personal control and more personal responsibility.
Those are the policies we ought to pursue. That is what the American
people expect, that is what they want, and that is what this Congress
is trying to deliver.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Gutknecht, Mr. Hayworth, I agree with you
completely. It has been 60 years since there has been a status quo
shakeup in Washington, and we need to change this liberal command and
control bureaucracy and return power back to the people, back to the
local governments so that we can do a more efficient, more effective
job of running this country and have a Government that works.
Mr. Speaker, we yield back the balance of our time, and again I thank
Mr. Gutknecht and Mr. Hayworth for joining in this special order.
____________________